


Life At Psi Corps Schools - Food

by pallasite



Series: Behind the Gloves [139]
Category: Babylon 5, Babylon 5 & Related Fandoms
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, Children, Essays, Fix-It, Gen, Growing up in the cadre system, Psi Corps, School, Telepath culture, Worldbuilding, telepaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-19 23:59:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16544849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasite/pseuds/pallasite
Summary: A reader asked me why I'd written inthis essayon Psi Corps classrooms why children in a Psi Corps school would be unlikely to try a variety of foods from around the world, and why children wouldn't be likely to try new foods to go with units they were studying in school (about certain cultures, regions, etc.).I decided to flesh this out into a full essay, so everyone could see the discussion.





	Life At Psi Corps Schools - Food

**Author's Note:**

> The prologue of _Behind the Gloves_ is [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10153487) \- please read!
> 
> What is this series? Where are the acknowledgements, table of contents and universe timelines? See [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10184558/chapters/22620590).
> 
> If you like _Behind the Gloves_ and would like to send me an email, I can be reached at counterintuitive at protonmail dot com. Do you have questions? Would you like to tell me what you like about this project? Email me!
> 
> I also have an [ask blog](https://behind-the-gloves.tumblr.com/), a [writing blog](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pallasite-writes), and a "P3 life" Tumblr [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/p3-life) with funny anecdotes. :)

First of all, I apologize for not being able to get more written and posted lately. I'm busier than usual this semester. ^_^

So yes, I mentioned in passing that while children in Corps schools would likely be exposed to music from around the world, they would have considerably less exposure to foods from around the world.

Why?

Music is very easy to access. They have lots of music files available, and children can listen to them. Likewise, children can easily watch vids (that are Corps approved).

Food is different. First, let me back up a little about how Corps schools are actually run.

**The teachers (usually) don't "write the curriculum"**

This is one place where again, focusing on Bester's childhood doesn't present readers with a typical Corps childhood. He grows up in Cadre Prime, the most elite cadre in the Corps' flagship school (in the Vacit era), where the teachers have the most freedom (in some ways) to design lessons. If Teacher Roberts wants one day to randomly assign something about Siberian shamans to the students, he can get away with that. Typically, teachers must stick to the standard curriculum, but there is more leeway afforded to those at the top of the hierarchy.

In general, in the Corps, teachers don't design the lessons. The Corps gives them a curriculum to cover, a curriculum that is written in part by telepaths and in part by **_normals_**. Yes, there are policymakers in EarthGov who decide what telepath children should be taught - this is why the "Psi Corps Student Handbook" is written not by the Corps, but by normals. Teachers have a limited ability to deviate from that, even when they know the curriculum to be lies (such as how history is taught, e.g. glorifying Crawford, etc.). And there is someone from the Corps who works in every school whose job it is to watch over what teachers are teaching, to make sure it remains in line with this established curriculum.

In a given school, no cadre would teach material significantly different from any other. And teachers couldn't decide on their own, "hey, it would be cool if we did a unit on India this week." Everybody stays in line.

**Teachers don't run the schools**

While teachers live on campus and teach, and administrators oversee that, there is a separate bureaucracy that actually "runs" the school. The people who coordinate food on campus, or who coordinate the landscaping, or who coordinate the maintenance of the buildings are separate. So it wouldn't be possible for the teachers to say, "we're studying India this week, so let's have some cuisine from India." It sounds great in theory, but in practice, these are different systems.

**How does the food system work?**

Simply put, it's unified. People are all eating from the same menu of options. While it's not impossible to change the menu, the menu won't change week to week. People eat what is locally or easily available.

Older students, and their teachers, eat together in a cafeteria. Younger students, and their teachers, eat together in the cadre houses. While students may have chores (cleaning the cadre houses, or doing their laundry when they are older), they may not have much experience with food preparation until they graduate. Food, like clothes, is just one of those things that somehow "comes from the Corps." Even junior Psi Cops may still not know how to cook for themselves, because when they graduate, they move into communal barracks, in or adjacent to MetaPol offices. (At some point, though, most telepaths do learn to cook for themselves.)


End file.
